


permission to just be the man you are

by plinys



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, The Framework Universe (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-09 23:08:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11114826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: "You were ruthless.""I was ruthless to win the heart of the man I love, the man you grew to be"





	permission to just be the man you are

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JackEPeace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackEPeace/gifts).



> Friendly reminder that Framework Fitz was awful before AIDA came along, this is a fic exploring that canon element that everyone likes to ignore. Shout out to everyone who encouraged me to write this sin.

There were certain things she had not accounted for when she reset the Framework to accommodate each new person. Dominos that would inevitably tip together. One after another hitting each other until the end result occurred. Each new persons regret playing into the next and so on and so forth.

She can see it clearly.

Hydra will triumph over SHIELD here: by allowing Coulson a peaceful life, by letting May save the girl, it’s already set on that track. 

Having Leopold raised by a man who has always had allegiance to Hydra does not help matters. 

She does not bother with the fate of the rest of them, they were never kind to her, they are lucky enough to get to be part of the Framework, the only person who she still wants to protect, still wants to make happy is him.

Introducing herself is an experiment to that end.

A way to be certain that he gets that happiness that he deserves, but also a research opportunity for herself, to understand how humanity works. 

To do that she creates a new version of herself, a human one.

With a backstory with ties to an important member of the Hydra High Council - an illegitimate daughter from one of his many mistresses - puts herself into the SHIELD Academy with credentials in computer science and anthropology, the one think she knows most intimately and the one she is desperate to learn.

It is easy.

Easy enough to simulate the life of someone who never truly existed.

To become so much more than her programming.

So much more than AIDA, to become - “Ophelia Pierce.” 

“Leopold Fitz.”

He is different here. 

There are ways she can rationalize that. 

That this version of Leopold, at this point in the story, is much younger than when she had met him.

Certainly his face is rounder, softer, as if there could still be some childlike innocence in there. But the way he holds himself is different, the way he smooths his hair down instinctively, adjusts his carefully pressed suits, the way his words are not tinted with the kindness that had drawn her to him in the other world. 

Something is off.

As if she hadn’t put him together right.

But no, he is human, real in ways she was not. He could not be programmed improperly. 

This must have been there all along, where she couldn’t see it, inevitable, a matter of circumstance. Human nature still an abstract concept to her. 

So much yet to understand.

But he is there next to her, with his soft face and cold heart, and that counts for something. 

The only way to understand is to keep going. All research mandates testing. 

So she does, repeatedly, she sits next to him each day. Engages in casual conversation, smiles the way she has practiced to in front of the mirror endlessly. Puts upon the same human emotions she can see from the other students around her, it’s all an act, she can’t feel anything.

A part of her has a hunch that he may know this.

That the way he looks at her like he can sometimes see through it all. 

Before he fakes a smile too.

The edges of his face turning up into something that’s not altogether kind. 

“Good morning, Ophelia.”

 

*

 

Romance is what she wanted.

To feel loved, to experience what that might be like.

A uniquely human experience. 

She is not sure that this feels uniquely human. In truth it does not feel like  _ anything  _ more than a steady weight of him against her, when in the middle of making plans to study for one of their classes he pushes her books from her hands knocking them to the floor and pushes her against the wall.. 

“Leopold, what-”

Her question is silenced by his lips against hers. Rough, pressing her up back harder against the wall of her academy dorm room. She does not need to breathe, not really, but her manufactured lungs gasp out as she hits the wall hard enough for her to feel something.

Pain.

One of the few feelings that Radcliffe had been willing enough to give her. All he thought she needed to appear just as human as the rest of them.

She feels that now, the bricks of the wall digging into her back through the thin fabric of her dress.

Fabric that is pushes aside moments later, his hand up her skirt, pushing her panties aside, before slipping inside of her.

It feels like pressure.

The strangest sort of pressure.

The feeling of something  _ inside  _ of her.

Unnatural, odd. 

But there’s nothing more than that.

She’s acutely aware that she is not human, that while her body is made in the likeness of one, to have all the parts of a human being, she can receive no pleasure out of whatever he is about to do to her. Yet, she knows what part to play. She has studied this act before, researched it to the best of her ability.

So she makes a noise that sounds like the moans she had heard in her research.

Pushes herself backwards so that the wall digs roughly into her shoulders again, and this time says, “More, please, more.”

“Fuck, Ophelia,” he says, his lips against her neck. He bites down there, at where her simulated pulse beats steadily on, before removing his hand from within her.

The absence is a feeling that she can register.

The noise of disappointment she makes is almost enough to feel like a true one. 

She watches as he opens his pants one handed, before using his other hand to push her up. Instinctively she wraps her legs around him, going where he has directed her, because this she has seen. When he makes a moan of his own, she knows that she has made the right move, has given him what he wants.

He takes her there against the wall of her dormroom. It’s rough. Hard. The heavy pressure of him within her, stretching her body in ways that are not really pleasurable - because she cannot feel pleasure, she was not programmed for pleasure - but is a sensation, is  _ something  _ she can register and that makes her desperate for more of it.

There’s none of the softness that some of the videos she had studied had shown her. The truth is, she is not sure what she would do with softness, she can barely feel what this is, let alone something less. 

It is easier to make the right noises with that in mind, to urge him for more and more, to moan and beg him to go harder to give her something, some point of reference. 

She is not certainly that she feels entirely satisfied when he finishes. When he drags her mouth down to hers to leaving a biting kiss against her lips. Another shock of pain, an echo to the weight inside of her, to the tight bruising grip against her hips. 

Then just as quick, it is over.

He drops her from his grasp so suddenly that she stumbles a bit trying to get her footing.

Her dress falls back down to cover her, while he quickly does up his pants, purposely not looking at her. 

Something was wrong.

Some mistake had been made.

Some miscalculation clearly, because he’s turning away from her, doing up his pants again, pulling on the suit jacket he had draped over her desk chair some hours before. 

This isn’t what is supposed to happen. Romance is supposed to come now. All the stories say so, he’s supposed to pull her to him, kiss her like she’s his entire world, lay in bed beside her until the morning sun rises. 

Not leave. 

“Leopold-”

“Grow a spine, Ophelia,” he says, voice cold and harsh. Mechanical. Like he is the one built of parts not her. “I can’t love a woman who is weak. I refuse to.” 

And then he’s gone. 

Out the door before she can respond. 

It doesn’t make sense.

Nothing makes sense.

Her carefully constructed hypotheses turning up with empty answers, with questions that don’t make sense, that don’t fit together properly. 

She rubs against her shoulders, where the skin is already starting to turn red, rubbed raw by the bricks of her dorm room wall. She presses her fingers into one of them, one that will become a bruise, presses down until she feels something. 

She’ll just have to become better.

Become what he wants.

 

*

 

She corners him a few days later, after research after studying who she has to be what kind of woman he wants. What kind of woman would match him. Adjustments to her personality code is easy to make, easy to grow, easy to modify to shift and change as new information tells her what to be.

This time she is the one that pushes him up against the wall, right outside the laboratory that they’re supposed to be sharing, its not as rough as the wall of her dormroom, smooth but solid and when he looks up at her there’s this sort of wild exciting look in his eyes.

This time she is the one to make him feel something. 

She makes her voice harsh, the way his had been to hers, cold as is her very nature “You’re not about to drop me like I’m nothing, Leopold Fitz, not after everything I have done to get here.” 

_ I chose you _ , she wants to say,  _ picked you out over the rest of them to be so much better, to have the world in the palm of your hand _ .

But he wouldn’t understand.

He doesn’t know their world like she does.

He just stares up at her, with a smile that is dark, but  _ real _ , and says, “Finally.” 

 

*

 

SHIELD falls.

Inevitably. 

Something she always knew was coming. 

Something she had constructed, a cause and effect, and thanks to her careful planning of her own backstory, she is safe. 

_ They are safe. _

Far away from the SHIELD Academy, where everyone who remains within it’s walls won’t be alive in the morning. That within the next twenty-four hours, Hydra will rise, and she will rise with it. 

_ They will rise with it _ .

(A part of her is relieved by that, but the fact that by that Jemma Simmons is at that academy, that the digital version of her won’t survive the night.)

“This calls for a toast,” she says, grabbing her drink. 

The alcohol doesn’t make her feel anything, but she can pretend, pretend to feel a bit lighter, to smile easier. An excuse to pretend to be happy. 

“A toast,” Leopold agrees, he’s standing beside her. Hand around her waist, possessive. Standing up on the dais above the gathered crowd of Hydra elite, those high enough not to have to worry about getting their hands dirty while the world sorts itself out to the way it  _ should  _ be. “To Hydra making the world great again.” 

The crowd echoes  _ Hail Hydra  _ back at them.

The fake father she has given to herself looks on the scene with approval. Nods in a way that is supposed to mean something. She does not need the approval of a fake man, she needs the approval of the one right beside her. The one that squeezes her just a bit tighter, before whispering in her ear, “Let’s get out of here.”  

She follows him out off the dais, out away from the crowd, back through a home that she is pretending to have sentimental attachment too. A childhood home. 

He had told her earlier, whispered in her ear in the middle of a crowded room, that he wanted to fuck her in her childhood bedroom. She had shivered at his words, saying yes, as she knew he would like. 

She assumed it was time for that now, which is why she’s surprised when he stops in front of a window overlooking the whole city spread out before them. Washington DC falling to ruins right before their very eyes. She can see a fire somewhere in the distance. Emergency lights flashing in the city streets below. The world is being reborn just for them. 

His hand is still within hers and he squeezes pointedly to get her attention. 

“Look at it, our empire building itself,” Leopold says, as if he knows her own thoughts.  “Years from now people are going to ask where we were at this moment, the moment when Hydra took what was rightfully ours. This is our legacy.”

“Ours,” she echos. 

“They think it belongs to them, everyone at that party down there, our fathers and their friends. They’re wrong.”

If only he could know how right that statement was.

It’s not real.

Part of her knows that.

A world she created, one she can manipulate with the touch of a keystroke if she wanted to.

But he makes it sound real. Makes it sound like there is really something they are building here, a legacy that they will tell their children about. 

In this moment she feels more real that she’s ever been. 

“We’re going to be better than them, all of them, they mean nothing to us,” he continues, “I’m going to give you the whole god damned world, Ophelia.”

The world is already hers.

“That’s all I’ve ever wanted,” she insists. 

He kisses her there, soft for the first time ever, soft like she always knew he could be. His mouth brushing just so against his, his breath mingling with hers, eyes fluttering shut.  

It’s then that he whispers the words against her lips, “I love you.” 

_ That  _ was all she ever wanted.

 

*

 

This is not the first time she’s killed someone.

Technically she has killed before.

To fulfill an order given. 

To protect the Framework.

To fix a paradox. 

Here it is different. 

(The truth is, when she is in the Framework the Darkhold has no control over here, it is easier to think here, easier to analyze her purpose, and to adapt that purpose into something else.)

Killing the woman in front of here serves no objective purpose. In fact, it counteracts her purpose to protect and to defend and to be a  _ shield _ . 

Technically this woman isn’t real, she’s just a fragment of code, nothing in her programming stops her from deleting a fragment of code. In fact her programming encourages it. 

Still the gun feels heavy in her hand, the pressure of it, a solid weight. 

“Ophelia, shoot her, and be done with it,” Leopold says, there’s no softness in his voice.

There had been a fight, some people still loyal to SHIELD trying to strike back. It was dealt with easily enough, all of those loyal to SHIELD dead except for the woman in front her of.

She’s got a familiar face. Someone that she knew from the other world, slotted into a new role in this world. The Resistance member that was going to die staring down the barrel of her gun. Someone that  _ AIDA  _ had been built to protect. 

But she’s not AIDA, she’s - 

“Ophelia.” 

Her name again, coming from his lips, that’s what pushes her to the point. 

Firing the gun is easy, point blank, no where for the other woman to run. 

It’s over in a second, only the spray of blood hitting her face - a physical sensation - letting her know it happened at all.

Her first kill.

(Well, her second, if you counted making sure there was no living avatar for Jemma Simmons to step into.)

(Well, her fourth, if one counted the other side, that agent who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and Doctor Radcliffe a necessary fix.)

(Well, her hundredth, if one counted the genocide that had been committed by Hydra in a world under her control.)

It feels like something.

Not something horrifying.

Not something unnatural.

Like success.

Her programming that had insisted she be protect life at all costs, circumvented in that moment, proving that she was more than just a thing under the control of others. She may not be able to feel things, not in the way humans do, but this is a rush of  _ something _ . 

There’s a sound she distantly registers a body hitting the floor. 

Followed by the gun sliding from her fingers. 

He kisses her, like she’s never been hotter to him. Like they’re not in a room full of other people, like there’s not bodies on the floor. Bodies that they put there. 

She wants to feel more. To feel more real.

There’s one way she knows how to do that. 

She holds tight onto his arms, squeezing the way he would squeeze hers, causing him to pull back ever so slightly. 

“I killed for you,” she says, hot against his lips. Because she is his, who else could say that? Certainly not that woman. She would never understand this version of him. Not like Ophelia does. “I’ll do it again, and again-”  He kisses her again, rough and hot and she moans into the kiss, encouraging him, when they break apart - “I want you, Leopold, I need you.”

His eyes meet hers dark with intent.

“Out,” he says quiet at first and then loud, turning away from her, but never letting her go, “Everyone out!”

She doesn’t pay attention to them, long enough to know if they do leave, if they follow his orders, because Leopold is pressing against her, pressing her back against the desk - the desk of the man who was the first to go, he’s slumped there somewhere on the floor behind them, she could see him if she looked away from Leopold for a second. She can feel his blood sticky on the desk, sticking to the hand that she had let fall back behind her for support, still warm. 

Instead she remains fixated on his face, on the wild dangerous look in his eyes, on the blood sticking to the side of his face. She’s no longer sure if it’s his or someone else’s but when she reaches up touch the side of his face, he stops her grabbing her wrist and pulling her hand down so that his lips can brush against her bloodstained fingers. 

“How did I get so lucky,” he asks her. 

“I chose you,” she said, because it’s the truth. 

“Yes,” he agrees, “And I chose you.” 

They don’t have the time or luxury to strip all the way down, but he does not hesitate as he unbuttons her pants, pulling them down to rest around her ankles. His own follow a second later. 

It’s not slow and sweet, they will never be like that, but his hands shake just a little as they brush up under her shirt to find her breasts, and that’s something different. Enough that she doesn’t entirely understand it.

So she forces him to become something that she can understand, she wraps her legs around him, and begs him for more, pushes him to go harder, until all she can focus on the feeling of him moving inside her, and sticky sensation of blood drying against her hands. 

 

*

 

There are some moments where she is so acutely aware that she is not human, that she will never understand the nuances of their human experience, despite all of her research. 

Technically she has met him before, at various Hydra social gatherings, in the house of the man that she still sometimes pretends is supposed to be her father. 

But it is different here just the three of them having dinner.

Her as Leopold’s  _ girlfriend _ .

A word that she know holds so much significance here.

Almost as much significance as when he told her that he  _ loved  _ her.

Though hearing the word twisted, falling from Alistair’s lips in an undertone, changes things. “Looks like you need your little  _ girlfriend  _ to defend you.” 

She’s not supposed to hear it, but she has enhanced hearing, better than her human companions, there is no way she could miss it.

Just like there’s no way she could miss the way Leopold seems to still, his hand turning into a fist at his side, nails digging into the palm of his hand. Subtle, but impossible for someone as in tune to his happiness as she is to miss. 

This was his regret not growing up with a father.

She fixed that.

Gave him the whole Framework to be happy in and yet sometimes…

The Hypothesis continues to lend uncertain results. 

“Leopold-”

“You’ve said enough, Ophelia,” he says, sharp, stopping her from saying anymore and turning away.

She doesn’t understand.

It doesn’t make sense.

Clearly she has done something wrong, crossed some sort of line, and yet the complexities of human emotions escape her. Unable to know why he would suddenly stop speaking to her. Cold and unpleasant and silent with her, even when they leave Alistair’s home. 

They make it five miles further down the road, no radio, nothing but stilled silence to keep them company, before she forces herself to break that silence. 

Admitting it is hard, she cannot tell him the why or the how, she simply just say - “I don’t understand what I did wrong.” 

He lets out a sigh, not quite angry but rather - “Of course, you wouldn’t.”

“Leopold, that’s not fair.”

He pulls over to the side of the road suddenly, jerking the car as he slams on the breaks. 

When he turns to her the look on his face is angry.

She’s made him angry.

She’s failed the objective. 

“Do you think this is easy for me,” he asks her, sharp and unpleasant. “I know that you outrank me. That Hydra is built on lineage and my father is a nobody in the grand scheme of things.” 

“What does that have to do with anything?” 

“I don’t need you to protect me! I don’t need a woman’s weakness. I thought you were better than that, I thought you understood” he continues, “And then you go and say that in front of _him_!”

His father. 

“I thought you two were close,” she says, when she wants to say  _ I thought you wanted him back in your life _ . 

“We are!” 

“Then how come he does not treat you like you deserve to be treated?” 

He seems to flinch back at that. Every so slightly. It’s minor, but he can’t look at her. He’s so different from the man she knew on the other side, he’s afraid to be kind, afraid to let any good piece of himself show. She realizes that now. 

Realizes when he takes a shaky voice before speaking. “People say that the only reason I’ve risen so high in Hydra is because I’m fucking you. I don’t want to believe them, I am an accomplished scientist in my own right, the best Hydra has. I have always been destined for greatness and I will do whatever it takes to achieve that.” 

“I know,” she insists, “You are.” 

“My father is among that group, the ones that doubt my merits,” he continues, “You saying things like that, coming to  _ my  _ defense, proves their point. You can’t do that, Ophelia. Not in front of him or any of them. It’s my job to look after  _ you _ , to be the man that protects the woman he loves.” 

It’s not.

He’s not the one programmed to make her happy. 

But he won’t understand that.

Just like she won’t understand what makes humans so sensitive. 

So she does not say it.

Even though it would be so easy.

She doesn’t mean it, doesn’t know how to express it, but it feels like the right thing to say, the right answer to give him, “I’m sorry.”

He doesn't reply to her, he just nods his head, once and then twice, and pulls the car back onto the road.

 

*

 

There’s a funeral.

She’s supposed to feel something, or pretend to anyways. The daughter of the real Alexander Pierce certainly would be upset standing there at her father’s funeral. She feels nothing. Even if she could feel anything, she would not.

He is no one to her.

A connection to a man she had never known, necessary only to put herself in the right position to fit in at the top of this new world that she’s made. Now she was there, ready to ascend to the top, she no longer needed it. 

It was easy to delete a line of code, a tragic heart attack, his daughter at his side when he passed.

She mimics the expression of sorrow on their faces, turns her eyes down, adjusts the skirt of her black dress, thanks them for their condolences with a robotic voice. 

She’s not even paying attention to the man speaking to her, someone insignificant, a minor player not worth her time.

Certainly not when she feels a hand against her elbow a moment later and a familiar voice cutting in, “You don’t mind if I steal her away for a moment, do you?”

He doesn’t wait for a response, and neither does she. 

Already leading her away from the headstones, aware for the prying eyes, away from where she has to pretend to be someone. 

Things have still been rocky for them, for the past week ever since the visit to his father’s that went so wrong. That was part of why she did this, to even the playing field between them. To make it so that they could take over as the ones with the positions of power, as Heads of Hydra High Council.

She did this for him.

He knows.

She can tell when he looks into her eyes, looking happy rather than sad, that he must.

Leopold’s voice is wild and almost excited though quiet enough that only she can hear when he asks, “You killed him didn’t you?”

She did. 

Technically.

She deleted the code. 

“Yes,” she says, the  _ for you  _ reminds unspoken but he must know.

“God, Ophelia,” he says, wonder in his voice, before pulling her down for a kiss. Hot and desperate. She would let him fuck her here, in the graveyard in front of all these people, they were nothing to her.

Lines of code she could delete just as easily as she had deleted others before. 

His kiss ends too quickly for her liking, she leans instinctively towards him as he pulls away, only stopping when he presses two fingers to her lips with a promise of, “Later.” 

“Later,” she agrees.

That wonder is still there in his eyes.

She put that there.

She can hear it, pride almost, in his voice when he speaks once more, “Now we just have to get rid of the rest.”

 

*

 

“Do you even feel anything?”

It’s not a question she can answer.

Not here in bed with him. 

Not when even after all these  _ years  _ she’s still faking a moan, faking the sensations of pleasure.

Not as he pins her hands above her head, putting pressure on them, with the intention to make her undone.

She knows what he wants.

He wants a woman that is made for him. The part she’s been playing for so long. 

A woman who is ruthless and cruel, who kills without hesitance. Who is highly ranked within their organization, possessing a lineage that is above scrutiny. Who will take him to the top right along with her. He wants the face the televisions see, the pretty propaganda, of a woman who is sharp and cold and beautiful. 

But then he wants her in his bed moaning up at him, insisting that all she wants is rough sex all the time. That she likes it when he pushes her up against the glass windows of their apartment to take her, that she’s not fixated on her expression in the glass. 

But he wants her to not question him. To be something that he can protect, something precious that he can display for the world to see. To be someone that everyone else can be jealous that he is lucky enough to have. 

So she does.

She has.

She has changed her coding, changed who she was meant to be in order to match him and he doesn’t even know, can’t even begin to comprehend what that means. 

He loves the woman she was pretending to be.

The woman that doesn’t exist.

She lets the part slip for a moment, just long enough to meet his eyes with a blank face with the expression of who she is at her core,  _ what  _ she is. Just long enough to see the confusion in his own when he meets hers, his hips no longer moving in the same steady rhythm as before, faltering in the face of her indifference. 

“You don’t want the answer to that question, Leopold.” 

“What does that mean?”

She kisses him rather than answering, because kissing is something she can do. Kissing is something she’s learned to make sense of. Kissing is something that guarantees he won’t ask anymore questions.

 

*

 

There is something special about being at the top of the world. 

The penthouse suite. 

The one everyone else salutes. 

To have gone from a nothing, from a  _ thing _ , to this. 

The Framework truly is the best version of the world. 

Her world.

_ Their  _ world. 

“I promised you I would give you the world, back when this all started at your father’s house, do you remember,” he asks. 

They’re standing together side by side staring out on the city, on the world that belongs to them.

That belongs to Madame Hydra and The Doctor. 

“Yes,” she says, “Like it was yesterday.” 

Time moves faster here faster than it does on the outside world. 

Maybe it was yesterday.

She is no longer certain.

So caught up in this new world. 

“I did it. I made this happen,” he continues, pride in his voice. “I killed for you. I hunted down inhumans and have taken them apart bit by bit for you. I rubbed elbows with all the right people for you.”

“For us,” she corrects, because while he was doing this for him, she was doing this for him.

The world was already hers. 

The Framework always under her control. 

It was everything else that made up the difference. 

The way he stands there beside her. 

The way he fucks her against her desk desperately in need of her.

The way he looks at her somedays like she hung the moon and the stars.

The way he buys her useless sentimental things because they reminded him of her. 

The way he gives her choice and control and lets her feel like more than just an android. 

The way she knows there was a ring hidden in the third drawer of his desk. 

This is romance.

Isn’t it?

This is what being human feels like. 

“I love you,” she says, because this is the closest thing to love she can rationalize.

Her hypothesis is proven true when he echoes her, “I love you too.” 

 

*

 

He is hers.

Something awful and beautiful.

Someone that she had to make herself ruthless to match. 

He is hers, and nothing can change that, not them - not the face on the screen before her. The one who has come to ruin everything she has. 

Jemma Simmons could never love this version of him. 

But she does.

As much as she can. 

And he loves her.  

“Good evening, Madame.”

“Leopold, come in.”

 

 

 


End file.
